Over the years I have heard of risk factors of schizophrenia like hitting your head against something hard, sexual abuse, or assault as a minor, use of marijuana or other drugs, a lot of factors in the womb (like stress to the Mother, pre-gestational diabetes, or exposure to a virus), and other things. But no matter what the percentage of those risk factors are in the general population one thing remains the same. The percentage of people with schizophrenia has been right around 1% for the almost 25 years I’ve had the illness. So I feel the most likely factor is a genetic constant. And if you find your kid has it you’d better keep them in a bubble because one of those other risk factors that are well over 1% may knock them in the head.
I’ve taken over 30 psychology classes (academia and in the military), and one of the first things you learn is that a correlation does not equal causation. (You made an excellent point in a humorous way.) Let’s say A highly (70%+) correlates with B, but that doesn’t necessarily mean A causes B, or B causes A. There may be a third variable. Let’s say there’s a 70% correlation between schizophrenia and smoking marijuana. The first thing this example brings to mind is the chicken-and-egg conundrum. Did schizophrenia come first? Did smoking marijuana come first? Or is there a third variable?
The strongest correlate, that I’m aware of, of developing schizophrenia is a biological family history of schizophrenia.
1 Like